A Fighting Chance

The old Smith & Wesson 19 had sat in my bottom desk drawer for almost twenty years. I did carry it for a couple of years after I got it from Walt's widow. That was before I decided I really didn't need to have an extra two pounds hanging from my shoulder.

The blue on the front sight was completely gone now and every sharp edge and a couple places on the cylinder were steel-colored instead of the deep blue it had once been. That's what all those years of sitting in a holster does to any blued gun. I was cleaning it and getting ready to wear it again, at least until I got finished with this job.

Walt was a cop I'd admired from the time I was about ten. He patrolled the neighborhood where I grew up, and as long as we behaved ourselves he never hassled us kids. I played with my buddies all over the neighborhood back then, and my parents weren't worried because Walt and the other cops kept the neighborhood safe. All I had to do was be home in time for dinner. Walt would drive by as we were playing catch in the park or riding our bikes, and he'd always yelp the siren on the patrol car and then wave.

I did have one run-in with him when I was fifteen. You know how it is when you're a fifteen year old boy and the testosterone has kicked in. You think you're a real badass and can take on anybody. That "anybody" for me was Sean O'conner.

Sean was as Irish as they come, and had the red hair and a temper to prove it. One Saturday while we were playing basketball in the park, he ran over me and knocked me down. I got up, looked at the scrape on my elbow, and then lit into him with all I had.

It was a pretty even match. Sean was a little taller and heavier, but he was leaving his belly open. He could keep me from getting too close unless he threw a punch at my head. I'd duck that punch and hit him in the gut as hard as I could. I had a bloody nose from a couple of punches he did connect with, but every time I punched him in the gut, he'd double up for a few seconds.

We'd been at it for a couple of minutes when I heard a police siren. Walt squealed the tires when he stopped, then jumped out and ran up to us. Walt was a pretty big guy, and he grabbed us both by the shirt collar and pulled us apart, then shook the living shit out of us until we stopped fighting him. He didn't mince words when he told us we were in trouble.

"What the fuck do you two think you're doing? I oughta haul both your goddammed asses down to the station. What the hell started this anyway?"

We both tried to explain at the same time, but Walt wasn't having any of that. He let go of my collar and then grabbed my by the front of my shirt.

"Did you start this shit like Sean says?"

"Well, he knocked me down."

Walt smiled.

"That's all? He knocked your ass down so you figured you'd knock his ass down too. What if I kick your ass right now? What the fuck would you do?"

Walt didn't wait for me to answer. He just swung his heavy cop shoe and booted me in the ass. Looking back now, he probably didn't kick me that hard, but it felt like it then. He pulled me back up straight and pushed his face so close to mine I could smell the cigars on his breath.

"OK, Harry, I just kicked your ass. You gonna try to kick mine now?"

I don't remember being afraid of Walt when he said that, but I was embarrassed all to hell and I couldn't look him in the face.

"No, Sir."

Walt looked at Sean then and pulled him close enough his nose was almost touching Sean's.

"You run over Harry like he said?"

Sean looked at the ground.

"Yeah, I suppose so, but he was in my way."

Walt shoved me back about ten feet and then yelled at Sean.

"Well, I'm in your fucking way now. Go ahead, try to run over me. Don't grin at me, you little shit. You're bigger than Harry, so you thought you could do whatever you want to him. Well, I'm bigger than you, so let's see how fucking tough you really are."

Sean stopped grinning then. He just looked at Walt, and for a second, I thought he was going to cry.

Walt laughed.

"Not gonna fucking do it, are you, 'cause you know I'll kick your ass so hard you'll be shittin' through your nose."

Walt let go of Sean then and his voice got softer.

"All right, you two banty roosters, listen to me. Fights never solve anything. The loser always wants another shot at the winner, and sometimes that ends up with one of them hurt bad and sometimes one ends up being dead.

"Sean, I know your dad because he has a beer in the same bar I do every Friday night. Harry, I know your dad too. He works down at the courthouse and we've had a few talks while I was waiting to testify in court. They're both proud of their sons, but I know both of them would take a belt to you if I told them what happened here today.

"If you shake hands and apologize to each other, I won't say anything to either of them, but if I even hear of this happening again, I'll haul your asses off to jail and then I'll call your dads to come get you. I'll wait for a couple of hours though, so you can meet some guys in holding who thought they were big and tough until they fucked up bad enough they got caught. When your dads get there, we'll walk down to the morgue so you can see what happens to some of the tough guys who weren't as tough as they thought."

Well, Sean and I shook hands and said we were sorry. Walt got back in his patrol car, but he waited to leave until we started playing basketball again. Sean didn't run over me again, and we never fought about anything from that day on. He ended up buying that same bar a few years ago, and when I stop in for a scotch, he reminds me of that fight. We both have a laugh at how fucking dumb we were back then.

Walt carried the Smith on his ankle for thirty years while he was in uniform, and then for another ten until he had a heart attack. About three years before he passed away, I started my PI business, and once in a while, I'd go over and ask for his advice about something. He was always happy to see me, and he always asked if Sean and I were still friends.

After Walt's funeral, I walked up to Brenda, Walt's widow, and said the usual stuff everybody always says at funerals only I really meant it. She held my hand and smiled.

"Harry, Walt always said you were one of his successes, and he was so proud of that. Come by the house in a few days. He left something he wanted you to have."

Three days later, Brenda handed me the Smith and a box of cartridges.

"Walt told me to give this to you when he died. He thought you might understand why he wanted you to have it."

Well, I did understand, because when I was just starting out, Walt had told me why he carried the Smith on his ankle.

"Back in '66, when I was just a rookie cop, I thought I could talk people into coming with me when I arrested them and usually it worked. Then one day, a guy decided to wrestle with me, and he managed to get my service revolver out of my holster. If my backup hadn't pulled up right then and shot the guy, I'd have been dead.

"A lot of the cops carried a backup gun of some sort, usually something small like a.32 or a.38 short back then. You know, what they used to call a Saturday Night Special. I didn't think I needed one, but after that, I realized I'd have been a lot better off if I had one. I mean, if Harold had been only a minute later getting there...

"I carried a Smith and Wesson Model 19 with a four inch barrel on my service belt. That was standard issue at the time and it was a great revolver. Never had a failure even though it just sat in my holster most of the time and I only cleaned and oiled it once a year after qualification. I was reading a magazine about a week after that, and saw Smith and Wesson was making a Model 19 with a short barrel. That really sounded like a great backup gun. I wouldn't have to carry different ammunition, and it would handle about the same as my service revolver. I bought one the next day, and I've carried it on my ankle ever since."

I'd been shot at one time since becoming a PI, and when I told Walt about it, he just smiled.

"You must have pissed off somebody and he wants pay you back. That's why I still carry my Smith on my ankle. I have more than my share of guys I put in jail who'd like to get even. With the Smith, I at least have a fighting chance."

I could believe what Walt said. While he'd gone easy on Sean and me that day, that wasn't the reputation Walt carried around with him. In addition to his service revolver, handcuffs and other stuff on his service belt, Walt carried a sap, a doubled, heavy leather strap about nine inches long. On one end was a wrist loop, and on the other, the two layers of leather were sewn into a pouch filled with lead shot. Saps are small and easy to conceal, but even a medium blow anywhere can make somebody reconsider resisting. A hard blow can break bones including somebody's ribs or skull if you hit them hard enough.

Today, you see cops on the TV reality shows wrestling with some dip-shit trying to get him into a pair of cuffs. It usually takes more than one, and eventually they get the guy under control, but even if they use a Taser, often the cops get scraped up and bruised as bad as the guy they're trying to cuff.

Walt didn't fuck around like that. He'd just pull out that sap and whack the guy until he stopped fighting. Walt's favorite spot was a tap behind the ear, not enough to break the guy's skull, but enough he went to sleep for a while. Today, that would be called police brutality. Back then, it was just a common way to subdue some asshole who thought he could fight hard enough to get away.

Walt didn't give a shit who or what you were either. He'd hauled in criminals of all races and backgrounds, from the ten-buck hookers on the street corner a dozen blocks from my house to the Assistant Director of City Planning who thought his position made his activities with several underage girls exempt from investigation.

Walt was actually pretty nice with the hookers as long as they went along quietly and they usually did. They knew they'd be back on the street in a day, so they didn't resist. Walt knew they'd be back on the street in a day so he didn't hassle them. After a few years of him arresting them, they'd just smile and joke they'd give him a freebee if he'd let them go, and then get into the police van.

Most of them even liked him after he made Sergeant, because he'd always let them get dressed before he let his team take them to the station. Before that, they'd be crammed into a van with whatever they had on, and sometimes that wasn't much. The guys downtown liked seeing naked tits and asses, but I guess even hookers can have some modesty.

He apparently wasn't very nice with the Assistant Director. What Walt told me was the guy had some trouble walking on his own because he'd kicked him in the crotch three times when he arrested him. When the Precinct Captain asked him what happened, Walt grinned and said, "Well, Captain, he was trying to run on me and that sure stopped him from running. Would you rather I'd shot him in the nuts instead?"

No, Walt wouldn't make it in today's environment, but he took a lot of bad guys off the street so they didn't hurt anybody else. Even though his methods were a little harsh, I had to respect him for his results. I had to respect him too for teaching me that fighting wouldn't get me anywhere, like he did that day.

I was twenty-four when Brenda gave me Walt's old Smith, and I'd been a PI for almost three years. I hadn't seriously thought about a gun because none of the cases I was getting really put me in any sort of danger. As soon as I was back in my office and picked up the Smith though, I had visions of turning myself into that tough as nails, don't fuck with me, kind of PI I'd seen in the movies. I went to the Nashville PD and convinced them that since I had a state license to be a PI, I also needed to be able to carry a gun.

At that time, none of the goddamned bullshit laws about guns had fucked up everything. They'd already run my prints when I got my PI license so after I filled out their fucking form, they issued me a permit. I bought a shoulder holster just like the PI's on TV wore, and put it on every day under my suit jacket.

Now, I wasn't dumb enough to believe I could hit even some fat son of a bitch if I didn't get in some range time, so I bought a membership in one of the local ranges, took one lesson, and then ran about ten boxes of cartridges through the Smith. By the time I was done, I could hit a standard silhouette target in the kill zone with about all my shots at three yards and about three-fourths of my shots at the seven yard target.

I considered that good enough. The Smith only has a two and a half inch barrel and the sights pretty much suck. Well, the sights are actually pretty good -- the rear is adjustable and all that, but they're so close together if you're a little off at the sights you're a long way off at the target. It's not too bad at three yards, but you have to really watch it at seven. I did shoot targets at the fifteen yard distance for a while, and I could hit a silhouette often enough the bad guy would have had a really fucked up day, but he probably wouldn't be down for the count.

One day in August, it was hot as hell outside and I was sitting on a park bench and watching a guy I was following. I'd sweat through my undershirt and my dress shirt and the armpits of my suit jacket felt damp. My tie was choking me and sweat kept running down into my eyes. I couldn't take off my jacket without showing the Smith in the shoulder holster, so all I could do was sit there and sweat some more.

That night, after the asshole didn't met the broad his wife thought he was fucking, I went home, took off everything, and stood in the shower for half an hour to cool out. Over a double scotch and a couple cigarettes, I cleaned the Smith, oiled it, and put it and my two speed loaders in the bottom drawer of my desk along with the shoulder holster I'd bought and the ankle holster I'd gotten from Brenda. That's where it stayed until I got into this case.

The next day, I put on a T-shirt and jeans, and put on a ball cap. It was still hot as hell, but at least I wasn't wearing the equivalent of a winter coat. That's how I've dressed since, except sometimes I wear a button up shirt and when it gets cold outside, I'm smart enough to wear a jacket or coat.

I haven't just let the Smith sit and gather dust. About once a month, I head out to that same range and burn up a couple of boxes of.38 Special and a box of.357 mags. It keeps my skills up and it's relaxing because I imagine the targets are some of the asshole people I've had to deal with. Every couple months or so, I'll buy a box of Federal Hydro-Shoks and make sure they still hit where I'm aiming.

That's what I keep the Smith loaded with in my desk drawer. They're more expensive and there are a lot of hotter cartridges out there, but they have reasonable velocity and penetration from a short barrel and without as much muzzle climb as those hotter rounds. They expand well so if I ever had to use them, they probably wouldn't go through the asshole and hurt somebody else. He'd probably quickly have a change of heart about doing anything to me too.

The reason I was getting ready to saddle up the Smith again was because of the current case I was working on. It wasn't my usual type of case. There wasn't some guy whose wife thought he was screwing somebody else, and I wasn't looking to find some woman who said "fuck it all", and decided to start a new life without her family. This one involved a woman, but it was a case that proved to be pretty unusual. Diane Moss was shaky as hell when she told me what she needed.

"I just got out of prison or I'd do this myself, but if I do anything even a little wrong, they'll send me back. I can't go back there. Those women are horrible. They kept making me do things with them that were...well, you know what lesbians do to each other.

"Well, I'd never...I mean, I like men and I thought most women did, but I guess when you're in prison for a long time, you'll take anything you can get. I wasn't that way, not at all, not ever, but when one woman holds you down... It was almost every day for three years. I just can't go through that again."

I asked why she'd been sent to prison. Diane looked at her lap for a while and then took a deep breath.

"I'm not very proud of that. Do I have to tell you?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know yet, because I don't know what you want me to do. It might be important and it might not. I won't know until I hear both."

Diane squeezed her hands together for a couple of seconds, and then looked at me.

"It's because of one I need you to do the other. You won't believe me, but I can't go anywhere else. I tried telling my parole officer, but he said the state had already proved their case so they wouldn't do any more investigation and if I wanted that my only option was a detective agency. I tried three other detective agencies. They told me they don't do that type of investigation and that I should go to the police. When I went to the courthouse for my last parole meeting, I overheard a woman in the elevator talking about what you did for her, so I asked her for your name. That's why I'm here."

I really wanted Diane to just tell me what the hell she wanted me to do, but like all women I've ever dealt with, there's no such thing as a short path to what they want. They have to explain and then explain their explanation and after that, maybe, just maybe, they'll actually tell you what the hell they want in few enough words you can actually make fucking sense out of what they're saying.

My ex was like that. On the rare occasions she actually wanted to be fucked, and those were few and far between, I'd be out of the mood by the time she got around to saying that. Instead of just telling me to fuck her, she had to go on and on about how she thought her ass was too big and her tits were too small and didn't I think it was unfair to judge a woman by the size of her tits and ass.

I learned after the first few times to just let her blabber away. If I said her tits weren't little and her ass wasn't big, she'd start talking about how all men would say that but never meant it and just said it so they could fuck the woman because that's all men ever want to do with a woman. Saying her tits were little and her ass was big but I didn't care just made her keep jabbering away about how I didn't really mean that because if I did I'd be fucking her instead of talking to her.

I never really understood that logic since she was the one doing all the talking, but I guess I'm just a fucking bastard like she said at the divorce hearing. I didn't understand that logic either, because I wasn't fucking any other woman at the time, and I sure as shit wasn't fucking her very often.

Honest to God, you'd think when women are in trouble they'd have sense enough to stop running their goddamned mouths and get to the point, but I guess that's too much to expect.

Anyway, Diane finally did get to the point.

"I was a teller in a bank, and I banked at the same bank. I'd been there about a year when one day the bank manager called me into his office. When I walked in there, there was a police officer standing there too. The bank manager asked me what I'd done with all the money I'd stolen from other people.

"I didn't know what he was talking about and that's what I told him. He just laughed and said he had all the proof and he'd sworn out a complaint and the officer was going to take me to jail.

"I didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer so the court appointed one. Mr. Graves wasn't much of a lawyer. He showed me all the evidence they were going to use against me and said I'd be better off to plead guilty because I'd get a lighter sentence that way.